Almost Here
by gottalovett
Summary: What happens when Ruth dies? Is she given second chances? An attempt to make 10.6 more hopeful and more life affirming with a definitive happy ending in sight. Harry/Ruth.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Harry Potter. This is J.K Rowling's intellectual property. Nor do I own Ruth or anyone else from Spooks. Kudos does. No matter how much I wish they didn't after the nihilistic finale.**

_So I realise this is a weird fic premise but just try it out ok... I want to make a more hopeful ending than spooks could give me in canon so I decided what better than some wisdom from Dumbledore ;) The quotes quoted from The Deathly Hallows are from p.p. 578-9. _

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><p>Harry's face was beginning to fade. It was so very, very cold, harder and harder to hold on to reality. She felt her eyes flutter close. She couldn't breathe.<p>

But then the weight felt as though it was lifted from her chest and she felt lighter. She could see her body below her. Harry kissing her dead lips. There was a white mist all around her, it billowed and plucked at her silvery form.

It was growing harder to remember things. Who was that man and that woman in the grass by the sea. Who were they at all to her? Had they ever mattered? And then a thought bade her move forward, to leave them behind, to journey up higher. Soon she couldn't see the couple at all.

The white mist obscured everything. Everything but the elderly man walking towards her, a smile on his face as he stretched his arms out towards her.

"My dear. Oh my dear. Welcome. Welcome."

She looked down at her body. It looked more solid again. She found she could touch his hands. Still feel them.

"Where am I? Who are you"

"You're in between." She noticed he had deep, blue eyes filled with compassion, and the longest silvery beard she had ever seen. He was wearing a grey cloak that dropped at his feet. He looked, she thought, to be very old and very wise.

"Walk with me," he said gravely.

She obeyed him without thought.

As they walked she noticed the silver mist was convalescing into something. Here there was a dome and there a bridge and through it all a grey river, and benches by its side. The memories were re-forming. She remembered London.

Incorporeal tears fell. There was infinite sadness in the old man's eyes. They were deep. So deep. Instinctively Ruth knew he had suffered too.

"I'm sorry. It is always painful to be forced to dwell on the past, especially when your future is taken from you before your time."

"I loved him so much. And yet we were never meant to have those things. Never. I wasn't brave enough, wasn't strong enough to love him before our time was up."

"You asked me who I am. My name is Albus Dumbledore; former Head Master of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, come to greet you on the other side." The abruptness shocked her.

She stared at him. Decided she didn't care for him. Tried to swoop down to the bench that she and Harry had loved so much, but Albus caught her hand in his and held her up amongst the mist.

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><p>And then...they were sitting on the bench. Albus was wrapping his silvery beard thoughtfully around his finger. "People always find themselves in the place that meant the most to them. Does that surprise you?"<p>

She didn't answer. She could see Harry sitting on the bench right next to him. She began to laugh, reaching out to touch his hand. He ignored her. The expression on Harry's face was terrible, ravaged and lined by grief.

Dumbledore sighed. "We're in between."

She was shouting now. "What do you mean? You heartless bastard. I love that man. That man there. Right next to you. Love him with all of my being and he can't see or hear me. Why not? Why the bloody hell not?" She was crying incorporeal tears again.

He sighed. "You are dead Ruth. But death is not the end. All of the greatest wizards always knew that. Death is simply a beginning."

"I don't care!" she raged, "I want Harry to be here with me." She was too angry to even ask him about why he was referring to himself as a 'wizard.'

"He can't," Dumbledore said flatly. "He is alive and we are not."

"Then this is the very worst kind of torture."

Dumbledore moved his spectacles down to the bridge of his nose, reminding her of her sixth form maths teacher after you had made a very obvious mistake. "Only if you let it be."

"I can't leave Harry. What would it all have been for? Nothing mattered. I didn't matter. Our love didn't matter. The world goes on."

Dumbledore was smiling. "And that is where you are wrong my dear Evershed. Love. _Love_ means everything. It is far better to have loved, than to have never loved at all. But come. It is far better to illustrate my point with a story than demand you believe me. And then I must take you to someone who has waited a long time to see you again."

Her hands clawed into the bench slats. "No. I won't leave. I'll stay here."

"Then you will never be at peace my child. All of us have a choice. We can linger and haunt and dream of what might have been. Or we can love life for what it was to us and put it away. It does not do well to dwell on what has passed. Only on what will become."

"But I'm dead. It's the end of the road."

"Ruth- you don't really believe that surely? There was always something greater. Beyond."

She was silent for a long time. "I don't know. In my job I always thought I was working towards the greater good. But look where that got my friends. Look where that got me."

"Listen, Ruth."

She laughed bitterly. "Why should I old man?"

"My name is Albus. I am, or was, a wizard."

"There's no such thing as witches and wizards."

His eyes twinkled behind his half moon spectacles. "There is you know. Living here. Alongside people like yourself."

"Even if I accept that you are not mad and that everything you say is true, why does it matter. This story of yours?"

"Let me tell it and you can judge for yourself." He didn't wait for her inevitable protest. "There was a wizard in our world who tried to conquer death. He split his soul into pieces. Just to defeat death. He was power hungry. He killed, murdered, maimed and all because he wanted people to think and act like him, to bend to his will. All because this wizard never knew, never could understand _love_. Some of us tried to fight him, but others did not. They knew that it was the right thing to do, but they chose instead, to do what was easy."

"I believe in my job. I believed in it every damned day. But the price was so high."

"You sound very young Ruth." He pulled out a piece of wood from his robe, twirled it and placed it against his temple. A strand of something emerged from its tip. He held the white strand in his fingertips...

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><p>And they were in an office. There was a glass cabinet in the corner. Dumbledore opened it and inside there was a basin. He placed the strand of white mist into the basin, swirled it with his wand.<p>

"Come closer Ruth. Look into the pensieve. See my memory."

She obeyed. There was a power about him in this room that she didn't dare disobey. She gazed into the white inside the basin, and began to be pulled downwards, falling or so she thought, into more white mist, and King's Cross Station.

_Dumbledore was walking with a teenager. He had black hair (scruffy) and green eyes and a lightning bolt scar down his forehead. Ruth wondered how he'd earnt it._

_He was talking to the boy. "Do not pity the dead Harry. Pity the living, and above all those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say goodbye for the present."_

_Ruth couldn't help it. Suddenly she was remembering them all; Tom and Danny and Zoe, Colin and Malcolm and Sam, Adam and Ros, Jo and Zaf, Tariq and Beth and even poor, confused Lucas. Why had she stuck with that job? Why had any of them? Because they had believed it was right to do so. It was right to protect the innocent. They had abandoned the easy route, and chosen instead, to die for what was right._

_She heard the boy, Harry, say something more. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"_

"_Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry. But why on earth should that mean it is any less real."_

And with a rush she was back in the misty office with Dumbledore.

He smiled at her. "You had a hard life Ruth. But you died for what you believed in. For love and sacrifice and bravery. There is always more good in this world than bad Ruth. Never forget that."

"But... if I am dead why am I here?"

"Not everyone finds it so easy to board a train."

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><p>And they were in King's Cross once more. There was a steam train at the platform. She looked up at the platform sign above her head, even as the train's whistle blew insistently. Platform nine and three quarters. How odd.<p>

Dumbledore was serious again. "Try to board Ruth. You have to try this for yourself."

She tried to block thoughts of Harry still alive and ever so lonely out of her mind. She took a deep breath and stepped forward, putting a hand out to open the carriage door... but she couldn't do it. With a whoosh of noise she was propelled backwards, firmly pushed onto the platform.

The tears fell freely. "Am I to never have any peace?"

"You've got to learn to hope again Ruth. Learn to believe in miracles. Then you can move on."

"How? How do I change now? In case you've forgotten... I'm dead!"

"I said before there was somebody waiting to meet you. He is here, even now, as we speak."

There was a movement further down the platform. As the figure strode closer to Ruth and Dumbledore she thought she recognised his young face, his proud features, his comforting smile.

"Danny," she laughed, running down the platform towards him, arms outstretched. "Danny!"

She collided with him, but he was solid and she could touch him, put her arms around him. He, at least, was real.

He was laughing himself as she clung to him tightly. "Oh Ruth. I've missed you. Deep down, you always were, to the last, bonkers but brilliant."

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><p><em>So I realise this is pretty much the strangest premise for a fic ever but I so want Ruth to learn just how much she was worth. ps: There is a happy ending to this fic :) If you're remotely intrigued by this please R and R<em>


	2. Chapter 2

_Sorry for the immense delay in updating this fic guys. A personal situation rendered me unable to write anything and then, as time passes, I find myself angrier and angrier about the ending of Spooks. I have a feeling dear readers, that once my wip's are finished with, this will be it for Spooks fic and me._

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><p>She wanted to ask him what he was doing here but that would be insensitive. She had been at Danny's funeral after all and he like her was dead. Her hand was on his cheek and he was smiling.<p>

"It's alright Ruth. The old man is gone. He has to see to the many. There are more than just us two. So, we can talk, at last. Here there are no security breaches, no threats, no bombs. Just the mists and ourselves and all of the time in the world."

She spun around to check for the white bearded man anyway. He had irritated her with his nuggets of insufferable wisdom. _It would be like him to eavesdrop on private conversations. _

Danny raised an eyebrow as he gestured towards the nearest station bench. "Everyone comes here eventually and the old man is here to greet them. He _is_ wise you know Ruth. Don't underestimate his words."

"You've matured since I last saw you."

"Believe me. I've had years. I know what you're thinking. If the old man is right and we are truly in between, and I assure you, we are, then others you have known have passed by."

"Onto a train?"

"Yes."

"Oh Danny!"

"The last man I met here called himself Lucas North. Took me an age to get any sense out of him. He spoke Russian for months and nothing else. He cried and raged until he found the blonde lady. She never spoke to me. Very severe. He called her Ros as she berated him for a fool and then laughed. Reminded him that colleagues were always O.K and that they would take the next step together. They wrenched the doors of the train open and as this Lucas looked at Ros all of the pain in his eyes seemed to drain away and her cold shell shrivelled. Just a fraction. Just for a second. But I saw it."

Ruth could hardly speak. Poor, confused Lucas. He might have kidnapped her, drugged her and destroyed another part of Harry, but she had long ago forgiven him for his failures. She had believed that Lucas was a good man who had put his foot forwards on the wrong path. A second on that path was all it took for a life to unravel; a second on that path was all that had been needed to let evil in. Lucas had been loyal and weak and corruptible but that didn't make what had come before any less significant, any less important. She had trusted him, envied his unswerving his loyalty, called him a friend. _Once_.

She managed a brief smile. "I am glad he and Ros found happiness. Tell me... did you ever... did you meet a young woman named Jo?" She tried not to think about the day Harry had received that phone call. The day she had sobbed uselessly against Harry's office wall. Jo had brought Ruth back, helped her see something in her life beside useless mourning and then just like that, she had been snuffed out.

"She was a beautiful soul. I could see that. Zaf told me he had to wait for her. He told me that when he left you he made a promise to smile at all of the pretty girls for you, but always he smiled at Jo, the prettiest girl he knew."

The incorporeal tears fell again. "He would say that. Zaf... was a good friend to me."

Danny nodded. "He waited for Jo and then they waited for Ros together. Zaf didn't mind. He'd waited for Jo once already, what difference did a few more years in limbo make? Well- Ros turned up on the heels of an explosion and flames. Jo spoke to Ros eventually. Said she had forgiven Ros from the moment it had happened, but had Ros ever forgiven herself? They all moved on eventually. See Ruth- we're all here to face our pasts, to forgive ourselves and each other. The good times matter here Ruth. They always did. Only sometimes we need a catalyst to help us see it."

"Have you seen all of my friends move on then? Colin? Fiona? Adam?"

He laughed. "I never saw them. I am not the gatekeeper between the worlds Ruth. That is another's job."

"Dumbledore's? But then why are you still here? Unless...?"

"No Ruth." He shook his head. "I am not like you. I have seen Zoe in the mists with Will. I have seen their child and their life. I have moved on."

She tried again. "Then something from before?"

"My poor, brilliant Ruth. Don't you see? Haven't you guessed?"

His knowing smile got to her. She had somehow forgotten how moody and arrogant Danny could be. Death dulled the negative aspects of a person over time. Especially if you had cared about them deeply. "I've been here for a couple of hours at most. Most of which was spent in near hysteria with a white bearded mystical know it all named Dumbledore who claims to be a wizard. Oddly enough, no, I have not had time to think about why you're still here."

He laughed. "I deserved that."

"Yes, you did."

He was serious now. "I made a promise to a friend a long time ago..."

Her breath caught. She remembered Forrestal and a dinner date gone horribly wrong and diamonds, diamonds held in front of her face gloatingly, her wrists aching from the ropes. She saw Danny finding her first, telling her over and over, "you are safe." She remembered the texture of the coarse blanket he placed around her shoulders, the pressure of Danny's hand on her back. Comforting. She remembered her own frightened, terrified voice. "Promise me something Danny. Promise me we'll never end up as bitter and as twisted and as alone as he was. Promise me."And he solemn and still hurting over Zoe, "I won't ever leave you Ruth. I'll always be here for you."

Those pesky tears were back. "You waited all of this time... for me?"

"I made a promise."

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><p><em>Next chapter is Ruth dealing with past demons :) Please R and R if anyone is still reading and enjoying!<em>


	3. Chapter 3

Ruth wondered how long she'd been trapped in the mists for. Certainly, time moved at a different pace here; maybe it stood still altogether. The mists could part and you could see the lives of the living below, people you knew, people you didn't know. Maybe she sometimes even saw the future and she could certainly see the past.

"You can see the pattern of things here," Danny had said one day as they watched Harry sit alone on The Thames bench for the umpteenth time. It got less painful the more you watched. You started to distance yourself, though sometimes she'd still find herself reaching down with her fingers through the mist. She could never touch Harry, though sometimes he'd look right at her, a flash of hope across his face, before he would age years upon bitter years once more.

Strangely, Danny never told her to stop watching Harry as he went about his clockwork movements through London. When she asked him why he didn't mind he would only say it was something Dumbledore was better at explaining.

They sifted through her own, older, painful memories together. Memories of her father dying, memories of her cold, aloof mother. Danny talked about that pain with her, about that guilt. Ruth was beginning to realise that she'd spent a lot of time in life feeling guilty about one thing or another. She was beginning to realise how feelings like guilt and jealousy and fear crippled a person, made a person small.

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><p>One day (or was it hour? Minute? Second? Some other particle of time and space?) Dumbledore met her in the mists.<p>

"Ruth," he said, holding out his hands smiling.

She would have scowled but now she knew it wasn't worth the effort. Dumbledore was eccentric but not necessarily _wrong_.

He slipped an arm through hers as he drew level with her, his blue eyes kind but stern. "Danny told you that I am the gate keeper between the land of the living and the dead, didn't he?"

"He did. I assume he was allowed to say so."

"Oh of course. Did he tell you why I was given this task?"

"No," she said shortly.

Dumbledore adjusted his half moon spectacles, making an odd face. "Interesting."

"Do you always have to be so cryptic?"

"People always accused me of being that even when I was alive. I was never cryptic about the things that mattered, but oddly enough, most people never saw that."

"So... why are you a gate keeper then? Why do you keep coming back to talk to me? I never asked for my own personal gate keeper."

"No. You don't get a choice in that."

"I wish I did," Ruth muttered, but it was half hearted, without malice.

He ignored her jibe. "When I first greeted you, I told you that it was things like love and sacrifice and bravery that made the difference. I told you that it is things like love and sacrifice that conquer even death."

"So I'm still here because I loved too hard?"

"You and I both know that's not true. You're here because there is hope even in death. Because death is not an ending. Not every time. I commend people like you Ruth, who love so fiercely that they are willing to die for that which they love. I was not so lucky in life. I tried to conquer death. In seeking out my own immortality, I brought about my own death all the more faster."

"What happened?" Ruth asked, interested despite herself.

"I told you about a dark wizard who tried to conquer death by splitting his soul into seven parts. I did not split my soul. I had not lost my mind quite so badly. But I did try to find the Hallows; the three Hallows that could trick death into never knocking at my door. I tried to defeat death, and so, the Hallows were never mine. I possessed but one, the lesser of the three artefacts and so death came. When he came, it was as a friend, and I had accepted him, but death does not like to be challenged." Dumbledore paused, waved his arm around the misty surroundings. "This is my punishment."

"To wander in between forever as some kind of ferry man for the living and the dead? But that's _horrible._"

"Is it really? It's not necessarily forever after all!"

"You're mad."

He laughed, genuine mirth spilling out of him. "I was once, and now, no more. I have been forgiven and I have learnt to forgive myself. Can one ask for any more than that?"

"You told me once that I was here to learn how to hope again, to learn to believe in miracles again. You said I'm here because I loved, and I made the ultimate sacrifice."

"There are some things that the truly evil, small minded people of our universe can never ever hope to understand."

Ruth was focussing unseeing on the mists. She was seeing George and Nico and their little villa in Cyprus. She was seeing the bullet go through George's head, the blood making a small, neat pool on the ground. She was seeing Mani telling Harry to do better next time, seeing Harry unyielding as the boy nearly died for some uranium. She saw Nico going home to Greece without her, saw him turn his face away from her as she tried to act like a mother, even as she knew she could never be Nico's mother.

There were tears dripping down Dumbledore's long nose. "It was the kind of job you chose Ruth, but that doesn't make what happened fair. People like Mani could never understand the kind of complex love you had for those two, could never see how it was powerful as well as a weakness."

"It didn't help them. George still died. Nico still has no father. I still feel... guilty."

"We all feel guilty about some choices we make in life Ruth. In death, you have to let that guilt go and forgive yourself."

"I don't believe in miracles." Besides, she'd nursed that guilt for so long, it was hard to let go of it now.

"Why not? You still love don't you?"

"Of course I do," she snapped. "I love Harry. I always will."

"That kind of all consuming passion for another person can make people do very brave and very foolish things. There was a man I knew once who made terrible decisions in the name of love, but in the end he gave himself, played two parts, to help defeat tyranny. That was true bravery to my mind. What's more, no one ever knew but me and Harry Potter how much that man gave."

She gave up on trying to understand the things that Dumbledore was casually referencing. "You're saying that I gave myself up for love in the end, and that that makes it Ok. Ok that my partner died?"

"No," Dumbledore snapped, and he suddenly seemed to loom tall and frightening over her. "I am saying that he died because of evil, but you kept fighting that evil anyway. You could have given in. You could have quit. You kept fighting. Why? Because you believed in something. You believed that you could make a difference. That you could protect other lives. That _always_counts for something."

There was a slight pause. "You are a very formidable man Dumbledore."

"I look at things logically. I've had the time to look at things logically. If you are here Ruth, it is because there is a reason for you to be here, and as I have told you many times now, that reason is love. It is that brightly burning love that gives hope in darkness and believes in miracles. It is that love that forces you to wait."

And finally it all made sense. Everything. "You mean..."

And Dumbledore smiled.

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><p><em>Sorry for the delay in updating. I had extremely serious family issues that made it impossible for me to write anything at all. I will try and post the final chapter tomorrow night before I go on 3 weeks holiday. <em>


	4. Chapter 4

_There are many reasons for why this fic has not been finished. I am sorry that it took so long, as I too, hate it when people don't finish fics. I had that family situation I mentioned take over my life somewhat and I started a thesis which ate up my remaining time. The other (much more selfish) reason for the delay is that I still am bitter about 10.6 and dislike thinking about it. To be honest, this is probably the last Spooks fic I'll write. Sadly, 10.6 finally ruined Spooks for me. My annoyances with the show had been building up for a long time- since s5- but I kept hoping the writers would redeem themselves. They did briefly with s7 but then it all went pear shaped yet again. I could have forgiven all for a decent Ruth ending but as we all know, it was not to be... oh well, "this dream must end." It did. Brutally._

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><p>Some time later, Danny appeared as usual; and yet Ruth knew something had changed. He was erratic, overjoyed. All that learned solemnity had fallen away like a discarded cloak, or an unwanted article of clothing.<p>

He was smiling, all those pearly white teeth showing, eyes bright.

"It's time."

It hit her quietly, the realisation an aching cold in her heart. He was finally leaving her. For what seemed the longest of moments neither said anything at all.

The joyous glow never left him, even as he must have sensed her fear. He held out his hands.

"You don't need me anymore and I have done what I was required to do."

There was the old Danny, the _alive_ Danny; selfish and oblivious and unaware. "Was that all I was to you? A duty to be fulfilled?" She spat, perhaps with slightly more venom than she had originally intended.

He didn't react. He laughed instead. It wasn't malicious and cruel. It was a laugh of genuine happiness, genuine uninhibited freedom.

So she laughed too. "Don't bother answering that, Danny. I know you care."

"It's partially that acknowledgement that allows me to leave you. You don't need my help. You've got hope. You've got love. There is only one thing left here for you and I am not part of that story, not anymore."

Ruth remembered Dumbledore, remembered the soft joy of her own realisation. Danny was right. It wouldn't be fair to keep him stuck between life and death with his purpose gone.

She took his outstretched hands...

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><p>And they were in a shadow replica of the flat Danny had once shared with Zoe. Even simulacrum mugs sat on the table, tea bag strings still dangling out of the cups.<p>

Danny gazed at the misty room for a minute, and Ruth guessed he was drinking every detail in.

"Good bye Ruth. Don't give up on him. Not now. Not later."

She found it in herself to be brave, to smile. "I won't."

He nodded briefly, turned and opened the flat door. There was a shadow taxi waiting in the shadow street. Danny opened the taxi door and stepped inside.

Ruth stood still, arms loose at her sides, as the taxi spluttered to life, took Danny away from her too, into the bright, blinding light, and death.

As she rubbed a tear away, the room began to peel away, disintegrate, the light sucking the details into blinding heat. She shielded her face with her arms and staggered forward into...

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><p>Dumbledore was at her side, and he too, was smiling like Danny had, her startled, terrified expression staring back at her from his infernal half moon spectacles.<p>

She sighed. "I should have known."

"Be brave, Ruth. It is, after all, the final test." He was clutching his illuminator whatsit between gnarled fingers. Even as her retina's burned, she noted how aged he was, and wondered how tired.

He brandished it up at the blinding, ever encroaching light that threatened to swallow them both up and clicked once, twice.

The light didn't fade. Ruth was left in total darkness. Dumbledore was gone. She could see nothing but blackness. Blackness and silence for what seemed eons and then- after what seemed an eternity, the sound of somebody familiar screaming.

She began to run.

The screams were ones of agony.

"Erin. For God's sake, Erin. Where are you?"

And closer now...

"Erin, for God's sake, please find me."

She followed the sound, down the deepening and dark passage way. She didn't stop to wonder where she was. She ran to the sound of his voice, fell on her knees at his side, gaped at the gunshot wound, blood blossoming slowly out in scarlet splendour.

"Harry," she whispered and to her relief and surprise he finally heard her, finally looked up and heard her, as he hadn't done since the day she had died by the lighthouse.

He groaned. "Don't send ghosts to torment me now. Hasn't the world taken enough from me? Ruth is gone. Ruth, darling, you're dead. Leave me be."

He began to choke, his hands clawed up, rigid.

"I'm not dead yet, my love. But I'm not alive either."

"Am I to go with you?" he managed to gasp.

"Haven't you dreamt it all this time?"

Erin and Dimitri ran into the dark tunnel before Harry could answer. They were older and more mature. They were jaded too, but who wasn't in Ruth's old job?

"Harry!" Erin cried out and fell to her knees next to Ruth. Dimitri ripped up his shirt, tried to staunch the wound, while Erin frantically rang an ambulance. From the expressions on their faces, Ruth knew it was already too late, as the mists rose like an angry wave and she felt herself being tugged away. She just had the forethought to clutch hold of Harry's blood stained shirt collar, before the mists crashed down over their heads.

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><p>Harry blinked confusedly as Ruth touched his face in wonder. It was a bitter face, and careworn with years of fruitless file pushing. He'd been burnt out, chewed up and spent by the system. The saddest part of all was that he'd allowed it to happen, allowed that bitterness to swallow his entire life up, till all had become useless and futile. She knew, because she had seen it.<p>

He didn't acknowledge Ruth now. "It isn't real," he muttered, "We are separated. There is no happily ever after for Ruth and I."

"We are both dead," she snapped, "but at least we are dead together. Let me in."

"Why should I believe you? It could be one more trick in my torturer's repertoire, and God knows, I've seen enough to believe it."

"You can feel my touch can't you?" She asked, her finger tips tracing his cheek.

'I've imagined that touch for years. My imagination has learnt to run wild since Ruth left me."

"Stop being so pig headed. I am Ruth," she snapped, forgetting her own confusion upon first entering the mists in her frustration.

"Do I dare trust my judgement enough to believe it?" He replied bitterly.

"Learn to," she pleaded softly.

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><p>It took a long time to wash that bitterness away, but time can heal many things. Even the dead can be healed in time.<p>

* * *

><p>Dumbledore wiped a tear from behind his half moon glasses. Oh! But how he did love a <em>happy<em> ending!

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><p>And so it was that finally... finally, Ruth and Harry could stand together, swathed in the mists of King's Cross Station, as a train pulled in at the station.<p>

Ruth was holding Harry's hand. "Come on! Let's get a seat!"

He stepped forward off the platform, wrenched a carriage door open, and swept Ruth up off her feet and over the platform gap and aboard. She laughed like a teenager and leant out the train door, waving enthusiastically at Dumbledore, his glasses gleaming from behind a shining white pillar. And then she turned and put her arms around Harry.

He kissed her passionately on the mouth and he too, was laughing, as he hadn't done since he had been young.

The train pulled out of the station and the light crashed over them, but this time, neither noticed nor cared. As the unknown swallowed them up, nothing mattered at all, because they were finally facing the end together.

_O children  
>Lift up your voice, lift up your voice<br>Children  
>Rejoice, rejoice<em>

_Hey little train! We are all jumping on_  
><em>The train that goes to the Kingdom<em>  
><em>We're happy, Ma, we're having fun<em>  
><em>And the train ain't even left the station<em>

_Hey, little train! Wait for me!_  
><em>I once was blind but now I see<em>  
><em>Have you left a seat for me?<em>  
><em>Is that such a stretch of the imagination?<em>

_Hey little train! Wait for me!_  
><em>I was held in chains but now I'm free<em>  
><em>I'm hanging in there, don't you see<em>  
><em>In this process of elimination<em>

_O Children, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds_


End file.
